Valid point, but at the same time I have enough experience with people making nasty assumptions about what I believe, based on very flimsy evidence and a lot of baseless judgement, to stand behind what I said. I did qualify this as a particular variety of "skepticism" - a qualification that the original post I was responding to certainly did not offer the people he was attacking.
Mine apologies. When you said "garden variety", I read far too much into it.
I'm not saying this proves that anything is right or wrong, just that the characterization of a particular class of beliefs as fundamentally and universally irrational is quite an indictment, and an unjustified one.
Currently, the human race doesn't have a formula to apply explaining why anyone adopts the ideologies that he or she does. This is a topic which I myself am actually quite fascinated in, and my girlfriend, who has made her entire career studying the use of mythology in nationalist politics, has put considerable effort into helping to crack this nut, but it's a very big nut. Currently, it seems what we know is everything is a "mode of thought" or an "ideology", and they all start with some "leap of faith" or irrational step. This makes it very difficult to speak in universialities about any mode of thought in general, and is, I think a critical issue with the postmodern perspective.
That's one whopper of an unsupported assumption. Bias, cultural assumption, dogma, unconscious beliefs all hold a huge role in science.
Sure do. Still, the experiments speak for themselves. Scientic models describe expected results. The models were built thanks to experiments. Future experiments, if followed correctly, should yield the same results, which elucidate the model. This circularity is held together by an irrational belief in the predictive power of induction. Barring induction failing us, I don't see how you couldn't have a book of the models and a book of the experiments that are used in deriving the models and not get similar results...and even predict them. I do admit ignorance here. If you can show me where I'm going wrong, I'd be in your debt. (No, that's not arrogance. That's genuine, respectful inquiry.)
It is demonstrably true that self-consistent but mutually exclusive systems of rigorously defined science and mathematics can be formulated. Ever read Goedel?
All of the Goedel I have read was based on formal, typographic, systems, and it does allow for the generation of different formal systems describing different, but self-consistent, processes we'd call "math." I have not seen any of Goedel's writings make this argument for science, though I have seen many use Goedel's name and abuse Goedel's proofs to do so. Again, if I've only seen the poor arguments, and you've got the good ones, I'd be happy to eat crow.
I can't get you interpret my saying that I practice the same spirit of examination and inquiry in the area of my metaphysical and spiritual beliefs as meaning I think my beliefs are "arbitrary." What I mean is quite the opposite.
Well, after you take out the options of some sort of universal rationality, you're left with "personal reasons", mostly, and those are arbitrary from a third-party perspective. Personally, I'm quite fond of such an interpretation. Arbitrariness is a central part of my metaphysics. Besides that, I had misinterpreted your statement as "I analyze my beliefs and realize that they're just beliefs and they're just mine."
And why do you assume my beliefs do not appeal to me? If they did not I would not hold them.
A lot of people don't. I got a misimpression you were someone who held certain beliefs not because you liked them but because you thought they were great truths.
And more to the point - I never said a word about what it is, in particular, I believe. Maybe you should ask yourself why you're so eager to put me in a box.
I did put you in a certain, misshapen, box...that's what people do when they try to understand others, to an extent. Really, to me, it doesn't matter all that much what your beliefs are. It could be God or Allah or mystical unity with the oneness of being or faith in chaos or toaster worship. I've done all of those for a while myself.;)
Intentional not, your former post does imply to me a religion/rationality dichotomy. I'll take your word that it was not intentional. Perhaps it is a latent presupposition. Perhaps, I merely misunderstood.
All I can do it restate my intentions. And my intentions were to not project a dichotomy; however, you're now projecting a new one- religion/rationality. The two are not dichotomous to me in the sense that they are not opposed (to do so would be making objectivist claims, IMHO), but do have interesting interplay. The most important one is this- consider a person who is ignorant of religion and all matters transcendant or divine. Can you rationally convince this person of these matters enough to agreey these matters exist and require a specific stance? I don't know. I don't think so.
My postmodernist sensibilities tell me that there's an irrational step involved in the adoption of any ideology of any kind, and so all ideologies are irrational in their roots. That said, however, I think that an application of pragmatics can give you a ranking of HOW irrational each is. Not all ideologies are created equally to me.
Religious systems with coherent epistemological analysis
That's not quite what I was asking for. None of the religions cited have the self-correcting quality of science. They are, in many ways, coherent, but they also have models that, if challenged or overturned, violate the ideology. For example, Zen cannot stand without a belief in the oneness of being. I give a lot of credit to Ken Wilber's attempts at making Zen a "science of the transcendant", but he still squarely sets the central oneness of being at the top of his "great holarchy", and does so with incredibly ad hoc reasoning and appeals to spiritual yearnings in his audience. (That said, he's the only guy writing metaphysics I'll even read anymore).
I think it's also fair to note that Pythagoreanism is unlike science in that science incorporates new data as it is found. The pythagoreans, rather than coping with new numerical concepts as they arised, declared many of them heretical and even killed members for professing their existence. I have a reference, if you need it. I don't have a reference for this, but I believe the Kabalists engaged in similar behavior.
And this is, really, a big point. A facet of science is the accepting of new data. If verifyability, repeatability, and analysis confirm things that overthrow pretty much everything we thought we knew scientifically, that's fine. By comparison, many religions, even the "scientific" ones, have dealt with new ideas in a very different way. Science has even provisionally suspended the "law of universiality", since relativity and quantum mechanics have yet to be united by unified theory. In the end, such a law may socially be ignored...IIRC, it was really a Newtonian idea, anyway.
I fear you have missed my point: that the scientific method differs from other systems of belief only in extent, not in kind. As the scientific method is based on irrationalities, if we accept science as being valid then we have to accept that knowledge can have an irrational basis.
Dude, I was on board with you on this when we started. Again, my postmodern sensibilities steer me in this direction. Nontheless, there are other ways for deciding ideologies that appear preferable. Pragmatics is my current favorite method. Just because scientific thought is irrational does not mean that it's equally irrational to other modes of thought and inquiry. And that's just talking about modes of thought and inquiry. Many (some would argue all; I'm not some) religions are systems of ritual and cannot be used for any kind of real inquiry.
The analysis-philosophy/religion-spirituality dichotomy is a false one. Your hidden premis is that no "religious" system can be founded on proper analysis or philosophy. To my observations, there are several religious systems for which this hidden premis is incorrect.
I'm sorry, but that's not my premise. I never stated that, nor did I intentionally imply it. It's also possible that we think of different things when we think of religion, but I refuse to play a semantic hornet's nest. Which religions do you think are build on rigorous analysis, out of curiosity?
I'm not certain where this comes from. To my knowledge there is no scientific discovery that has debunked any major world religion. If you are referring to the Christian fundamentalist movement which believes in a 5,000 year old earth, be aware that they are a very small minority of Christians. (Albeit very numerous in North America.)
Technically, you can't just empirically debunk a religion, since most of the foundations of a religion are based on matters that are generally accepted as beyond the reach of empirical methods. I also never said there was a religion that science completely debunked. Maybe a cargo cult or something like that...
Except the very principles of science dictate that this cannot be the case. Scientific inquiry is built on the twin axioms of the law of universal conformity and the law of non-contradiction. Science offers no reason to believe that either of these can be the case, nor can it. The difference between accepting only these axioms and accepting the axioms of some of the more coherent religious movements is only one of extent.
This is true, but this is where I switch into pragmatic concerns and go with what has been working best for me. You no like-ah dee science? That's-ah fine with me. Just don't expect me to find much to talk about with you.
Regardless, the flexible changing of the model, dropping old ideas in favor of more correct and new ones, is in keeping with universal conformity and non-contradiction. The model was wrong given the information at hand, so something in the model was fixed. The two "laws" of which you speak are not regulations against this.
Classic debunker examples include:
Nobody saw that rock fall out of the sky, therefore your claim that rocks (ice balls, frogs) fall out of the sky is false.
Your airplane prototype crashed, therefore men will never fly.
You haven't produced a half-man/half-ape fossil, therefore Man is a special creation.
These all look like lines from debunkers from times far long ago, and many debunkers back then didn't seem to understand the reasoning processes implicit with skeptical thought back then. That's why so many of them also claimed they'd found "the real deal" with certain spirit media.
Of course, if nobody had ever seen rocks fall from the sky before, and someone showed me a rock with no indication that it had fallen from the sky, I myself would suggest that, if rocks do fall from the sky, there's still no reason to think it...even though, on the whole, the matter is not closed. Having tentative conclusions is important to me, even though I'm willing to discard them and admit that a matter is still open to debate and discussion, and that more information is needed to put the matter to bed.
Among scientists, the fallacy manifests most harmfully when the conventional theory for a phenomenon is no better supported than the alternatives. Careers are blighted. Recent examples from biology that suffered "debunking" for decades include:
Some of the topics listed are still controversial, and debunking (literally, the removal of bunk) is an important part of keeping the waste material out of the controversy...it just has to be done correctly or an entire idea space can suffer from a metaphorical case of auto-immune disorder. Some of the topics you listed, however, have shown how the power of experiment and validation quiets contrary ideas.
So called skeptics are really debunkers that need to protect a metaphysical belief system called materialism.
No, they're not. Some of them are empirical positivists. Some of them go so far as to deny the very concept of knowledge. Personally, I'm an existentialist with some transpersonalist leanings.
IIRC, the word "skeptic" originally meant "thoughtful" or "reflective". A skeptic, to me, is someone who simply demands proof of claims, even of their own, and is willing to analyze their own epistemology enough to understand the potential failures and fallacies in it. Anyone who calls himself a skeptic and fronts materialism as a great truth without admitting to being a materialist or explaining the failures of his own ideology is probably better called a cynic than a skeptic, IMHO.
Okay, I'll bite this troller's bait. This review, and probably the book (I won't actually review something I haven't read, so a caveat here that I'm just going off the reviewer's obviously biased sentiment) and certainly this comment are all typical of a particular (and if I may say so, garden variety and dime a dozen) variety of "skeptic." This smart guy has everybody figured out - they are slaves of their childhood training, not liberated minds like ol' Boomer here.
Read some Shermer, get to know some genuine, honest skeptics, find out what skepticism as a way of thinking means, and then come back and see if you have the same gall for your commentary that I do.
And the problem is that is just patently not true. The list of people far more intelligent than me and (I'll intuit from your ill-considered response) you, BoomerBuddy, who also believe in some aspect of spirituality, goes on and on. Great writers, politicians, mathematicians, logicians, and scientists can be found among the ranks of believers of various creeds.
This is a fallacy known as "appeal to authority." Just because someone smart, famous, or important believes or says something does not make it true or even worthwhile in considering. As an example, I'm rather fond of a philosopher named Ken Wilber. Wilber's a bright and eloquent person, but he also got duped by a cult leader who talked a good line. Smart people make mistakes and fallacies as rapidly as someone else. Part of the hope of a skeptical mentality is to be thoughtful of propositions, including one's own, and to make sure that they're not part of some wanting to believe in things that just don't empirically add up.
But I'm sick of people that treat science like the end-all be-all of human reason with a dogmatism that would do the least reflective religious zealot they despise proud and seem incapable of grasping that there are wider philosophical issues (like consciousness, free will and morality) that science has little or no grasp on - and which metaphysical and spiritual disciplines provide sophisticated and elegant treatments of.
To be frank, I believe that spiritual and "metaphsyical" (in the new-age sense, not the branch of philosophy) provide nothing but a jumble of suppositions designed to make people feel that they know what they're really talking about. I'm not a fan of reductionist materialism, but I believe the spirit of scientific inquiry is important here. One of the things I see as important in scientific rigor is the way in which one can start with a complete ignorance of current scientific models and, through repetition of experiments and analysis of the data, arrive at current models. I agree that study of metaphysics (as philosophers term it) is an important thing, but a similar rigor must be kept in place. To put it bluntly, the implications of every metaphysical conclusion should be tested, analyzed, criticized, counter-criticized, etc, so that we can build a strong, ongoing shared language of subjective experience to complement the strong, ongoing, shared language of the objective (science).
It is rigorous analysis and philosophy, not religion or spirituality, that is the real tool for generating understanding here. Religion and spirituality are, by comparison, random speculation and arm-waving. I think this is an interesting age in which to engage in philosophy, too. Postmodernist perspectives are opening a lot of new doors for avenues of thought and reflection, and relatively few people are taking them up.
Spare me, pal - I don't need your sympathy for my beliefs, which I maintain and practice with my eyes wide open, and with my intellect, doubt, skepticism, spirit of inquiry and open mind intact.
If you admit to how arbitrary your beliefs are, then why not just accept their arbitrary and personal nature and pick some that really, really appeal to you? Emerging religions and quasi religions like Wicca and Chaos Magick are clearly a result of this growing metaphysical skepticism and postmodernism in culture...this is your chance to have the transcendant be whatever you please.
It's an attitude you would do well to work on, because if the history of science is any indication, a whole bunch of the stuff you believe in is wrong.
That's the whole point of science- things indicated by experiment are right until they're indicated by further experiment and analysis to not be. Science is self-correcting in this way, and every idea is really a tentative one, waiting for a better idea to unseat it. Strongly believing in the veracity of that which is indicated makes sense, though. Just because what you agree with today can be overturned tomorrow doesn't mean that belief isn't useful today. You just have to be willing to toss it aside with something better comes along. Most scientists do that.
What the court said essentially was if a minister rips off people it's something the state can't get involved in! Amazing.
They've done that for years just by letting such people exist. Seriously- if anyone else told you to give them money because it gratifies an invisible, all-powerful being, would you consider that a reasonable request? It's a scam from one end to the other. The use of a small radio to enhance the scam is only a matter of how complex the scam is.
This argument is old. It has been presented numerous times over the past ten years, many times much more convincingly than appears here.
Helloooo! A simple Slashdot opinion post is clearly not even intended to be on the same level as arguments with a bigger scope of time.
You might also want to try being explicit about why C or Java is better than C++.
I wasn't trying to say why C or Java is better than C++. I don't stoop to such vacant navel contemplation. I was making a statement of my own personal preference and giving a couple of general and personal reasons why.
Stroustrup actually has a faq on his home page which refutes most of the common criticisms applied to C++. You should be able to find this via google.
It would seem that Stroustrup's FAQ doesn't really refute many criticsms at all.
The relevant works are listed in the C++ faq lite.
Believe me when I say that, mostly, I do agree with your argument about languages that are well-targeted for certain goals. I think it's a useful idea. That said, though, I'd support changing Java to support numerical work. I believe that James Gosling supports this, too, and I recall that he's supposed to be working on a bunch of stuff for JDK 1.5 that would significantly improve number crunching. I read this all in a trade magazine some time ago now...maybe a year ago or so?
To draw attention to your Swiss Army Knife metaphor...
I carry a Swiss Army knife with me everywhere (I saw too many episodes of MacGuyver, I think). It's a pretty good tool for most things, and it can do an awful lot, but it isn't as strong or useful as task-specific objects. The little scissors don't compare well to "real" scissors for serious paper-cutting; the saw works, but a chainsaw is better; the can opener functions but makes my hand shurt. None of the knife's tools are optimal -- but it's easier to carry one small red knife than it is for me to laod down with optimized gadgets.
First off, on a humorous note, I should mention that I used to carry a Swiss Army Knife with me, too, until I saw a friend of mine cut himself rather badly with one because his SAK didn't have a locking blade. I know some of them do have blade locks, but I've heard from other people that the locks don't really work and the knife blades slip anyway. Now, I carry with me a Spyderco, and while it doesn't have 20 tools with it, it also has a guarantee that the lock will not release unless the release button is pushed. I think there's something symbolic here...
On a more serious note, though, when I gave up my SAK, I went through a process of asking myself how many times I used each tool on it and whether or not each tool used could be replaced easily. What I found out was that a knife, a keychain can opener, and a keychain bottle opener were all I really needed, anyway. I haven't missed the scissors, the leather punches, the saw, etc. Again, I think there's something symbolic there, too, that's applicable to this discussion.
And now, to get a little more serious...again I'm not against the toolbox metaphor, but there's a difference between a true toolbox metaphor and the C++ take on having a kit of programming tools at your disposal. It boils down to this- if I use a socket wrench to tighten a nut, I can use anything that can grip the nut (crescent wrench, channel-locks, etc) to get it back off. That's because the use of the tool changes nothing.
But C++ "tools" are facets of the language, and using one means changing the project and moving it along a specific paradigm. Once a path is taken...say...someone bolts non-OO code in with my OO code...it's hard to go back and do it the other way. This is the equivalent of making a nut that, once tightened with a socket wrench, cannot be messed with until someone changes the bolt. Your project isn't some stable thing you use "tools" on...your "tool" selection alters your project until you go back and rewrite your work. Rather than seeing the different language constructs as "tools", which I feel they are not, we should look at them as "parts" used in building. The question in picking which one shouldn't be "Is this the right tool for my immediate problem?" Instead, it should be "Is this going to contribute to a sensible enhancement, or will this cause the project to look like Frankenstein's monster?"
As a result, I only apply the "tools" metaphor when there is a really good cause for indifference with respect to design. Perl is a language that I feel is built well around this metaphor, and since I hardly ever write anything I care about in Perl, I'm happy to apply it there...but I'm not going to do it with anything large, complex, or where there's personal investment.
I am all in favor of object-oriented programming -- but my philosophy matches that of Bjarne Stroustrup, who refers to his language as a having "multiple paradigms." Use OO when it makes sense -- but use the right tool for the task at hand. C++ does not force you to use OOP when it doesn't make sense.
This is entirely a personal matter and I might even get labelled "flamebait" for this, but I really have to say...I've spent plenty of time working with C, C++, and Java. The end result is that I'd rather write in C or Java. C has the honesty of being strongly procedural, and if you wish to use some OO ideas where it makes sense, you can build up some limited OO constructs. Java is strongly OO, and if I don't like some of the limitations that come with Java (such as the floating point performance hit), I can link in C code with JNI. I'm fine with that. Each of these two approaches lets you build the tools you need when you need them.
But C++? I can't stand the C++ way of doing things. What a mess. Stroustroup is right that it makes sense to use the best tool for the task at hand, but Stroustroup et al have taken that metaphor to a fault in all of the waywards "features" of C++. Unlike building OO ideas in C or linking procedural code with a strong OO language (like one can do with JNI), C++ throws a giant jumble of so-called "tools" at the programmer and lets him choose whichever attitude s/he wants.
Why do I get annoyed at this? Simple. In the two cases I like, you're free to use whatever tools you like, but those tools must ultimately be expressed in terms of the overall principles of the language at hand. No C coder looking at an "object" in C can ignore the fact that it's just a collection of pointers. No Java coder can ignore the fact the native method is still in the context of a Java object. At the same time, though, these people can also go along with these ideas easily because everything has been expressed in the simple, pre-existing ideas of the language. A pseudo-OO method call in C is just working with a function pointer...a native method in Java is still a Java method.
The problem is...C++, to me, lacks this overall paradigm, other than maybe "anything goes...no kidding". The language constructs in C++ just provide programmers with tools that defeat the idea of working within a paradigm at all. The result that I keep seeing is an endless parade of poorly bolted-on code from program maintainers before me. Friend functions parade through endlessly, turning the code into a pile of well-convoluted spaghetti.
And I think what it boils down to is that many of C++'s features were designed by highly competent computer scientists who thought that they'd like to have certain pet features they liked a whole lot, so they just implemented them in C++. Afterthought upon afterthought has taken the "toolbox" model and left things the way they are. And I still hear cries from people for more new features in the language.
The toolbox model is great, but the argument behind the toolbox metaphor needs some more thought. Unlike the box of tools in your garage, the choice of which "tool" you use in C++ (or any other language) actually changes the project you're working on. You cannot freely throw different solutions at something interchanagbly as a result, and if you do, your project can find itself going the way of the Tower of Babel.
This isn't to say that I don't think C++ can be used for good things...what I am saying, though, is that, by making multiple paradigms available in the same project, it's easy to become buried under idiosyncracies that result from people picking whatever paradigm they want when they want it...and that a common paradigm that many programmers select is "whatever I want, whenever I want it."
Personally, I would love to have a language as strongly and strictly OO as Java that could deliver native-code performance. I have not, as yet, seen one that really wowed me, though.
Slap on an effective means of remote code download and execution without concern for the remote system's OS or architecture, and I'd be the first convert in line, too.
I think that you forgot one feature of Java that, to me, is probably it's most powerful and most overlooked feature: dynamic class loading. The dynamic loading power of Java is, in my experience, worlds beyond that offered by C and C++ because of the fact that you can load a class for execution through so many very different means and can, as a programmer, remain unconcerned about things like the OS of the system from which you receive the class. Classes can be very easily procured from remote systems and boostrapped into the code right away with a level of transparency that I just haven't seen from C and C++.
Yes, C and C++ have dynamic loading capabilities. I've used them, and I'm aware of them. What I'm saying is that I don't find them as flexible or simple as the Java loading mechanisms and, most importantly, it's very difficult for multiple machines with widely different OSes to use the same remote piece of executable code with that level of transparency. Yes, I know that CORBA helps get around this, but I can't say I find CORBA very elegant.
To me, the promise of Java is evident in its uses in making relatively lightweight and secure networking infrastructure. The power of easy remote class loading is what gives projects like Jini the means they need to make physical network location nearly irrelevant in distributed computing.
I think you need to try a new perspective on the "the world is about violence" concept. You don't need marauding gangs around to understand this. I live in a very civil world, and I'm very thankful for that.
But, what you need to do is take a closer look at the civil world. Civillity is basically a set of rules and forms people mutually apply as a proxy for violence. Politics...commerce...even tort law...all of these things are wrappers for violence. What they do is to either stunt violence off by making rewards greater than risks (commerce becomes the alternative to armed theift under this case) or by symbolically putting a form of superior violent force on one side of the issue (elections and government in general are examples of this). Even tort law exists as an alternative to duelling.
To take another perspective, in the end, violence is the great equalizer. You bring violence to the table, and it trumps civil behavior. The most common resolution to the initiation of violence is to bring sufficient violent force to the opposing side that it trumps the situation. This happens anywhere and everywhere someone is arrested for a crime. Civil discourse and rationality rarely play into it.
And this is how violence sits at the core of the human experience. Then again, I train in very lethal forms of armed and unarmed combat (though I have not yet purchased a firearm for myself, I plan to in the future), so maybe my personal perspective is skewed.
Mr. Shatner, what prompted your brief stint with the WWF back in the early 1990's? Did you know Jerry Lawler personally or something?
I'm being serious. I remember seeing Shatner on a couple episodes of WWF Monday Night RAW when I was a teenager, and I always wondered how and why that came to be.
970 AM is an okay station, but it still breaks for commercials. I listen to talk radio mostly because I find the sound soothing and, well, the commercials are anything but.
Granted, if I'm up late at night and want some amusment, Coast to Coast AM is on, and Art Bell and his gang are really funny to listen to. I think, of all of them, it's Streiber whose mind is the furthest gone.
Sometimes I'll remember to catch Neal Boortz on 930 AM in Sarasota. He's a Libertarian pundit, and while I also think he's a jerk, I enjoy hearing the Libertarian take on things.
NPR did do a series on the history of the Israel conflict for a week and a half a few weeks ago, but I wouldn't call their coverage of Israel excessive. Additionally, it is a major issue in international politics. Now, granted, I hear only one hour of ME and one hour of ATC, but I don't recall more than maybe one or two Israel stories in the last two weeks.
On top of that, I can recall ATC very recently giving an NRA rep excellent time to express his opinions about a rifling signature database, and he definitely outshined his opponent. That's just in my recent memory.
But I really don't give much of a care about the bias of NPR anyway. It's mostly background noise while I drive and think. Neither the "liberal" nor "conservative" agendas fit with my views, anyway.
What you mention is actually what the final straw was for me. I could not understand why a system that was advertised to me as being "two powerful satellites" and "radio by satellite" and so forth would have the level of outages and dead spots that they did. The issue that XM tech support finally found when I complained was "a repeater failure", at which point I realized what their game was.
Interestingly, I would think an equatorial orbit would have been fine for me, as I live in central Florida.
The NPR station I listen to runs, more or less, two news programs- Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Both programs are, IMHO, very good at providing two sides for every issue and being minor in bringing in personal opinion. I've listened to talk radio for years now, both "liberal" and "conservative" formats, and I have to say that the two news shows I listen to on NPR do not seem like either to me.
Also, last time I checked, government funding for NPR isn't all that high.
Actually, I don't give the $10 to XM, since I returned my XM radio. I was just saving the $10, but I really should give it to NPR, since I do consume their programming daily.
Here in Tampa, we have a radio that buys some PRI shows and also fills in with a lot of Pacifica shows and local programming that doesn't get anywhere near the funding NPR does, and I've given money to them in the past, since I felt I had to triage my donations, but I really should be giving to my NPR station, too.
I bought an XM radio kit with some of my signing bonus last year. Since I was going to commute one hour each way down the interstate, I justified the cost to myself as a nice way to have better programming for my commute. The station guide seemed interesting enough...I could get BBC radio, CNN, CNet, a channel of standup comedy, selections of music that interest me, and so on. The $10 each month seemed very reasonable for commercial-free options that I'd enjoy.
So, I bought the kit and I installed everything as per the manual. I activated my account. I got everything in order. I started listening that night. It was really cool to be able to get a continuous mix of house techno and, with the spin of the dial, CNet news. I loved that, if I wanted a laugh in the morning, I could listen to comedians with talent instead of shock-jocks with carnival barker voices. Everything was all well and good...
...until the first time I actually tried to drive any actual distance with the thing. My commute is on an often-used 60-mile corridor in Florida from Tampa to Sarasota, and I couldn't get a signal for more than a few parts of it. So, I called XM technical support. The support lady was nice and said she'd file a trouble ticket. It was a very new system at the time, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
And then two weeks went by, and I still couldn't keep a signal over my commute. I also started noting that I couldn't keep a signal in-town all that well. I also made a couple drives through the major metro areas of central Florida and could not keep a signal. This started becoming frustrating. It was about this time, though, that I noticed the programming wasn't all that good. The comedy channels just played the same handful of routines by trite comedians over and over again. The 80's station wasn't really covering what I wanted to hear, either. Slowly, the stations I was enjoying just became boring.
After letting XM take two weeks to try and resolve their issues, I called again, only to be told by the support rep that there were not any such problems and that everything was my fault. I explained my configuration to her and she agreed I hadn't done anything wrong. I told her that XM had been given a month of opportunity to communicate with me and hadn't done so, and so I needed to cancel my account. She then asked me to hold the phone for a minute. When she came back, she reported that there was indeed a problem in my area and, if I could just sit tight a little bit longer, it'd be fixed.
By this point, I'd given XM a month, and I needed to return the radio soon or I wouldn't be able to get a refund from Best Buy. I cancelled my account and took the radio out of my car. I was a little disappointed that I lost my alternative to crappy commercial radio, filled with advertisements, music I hated, shock DJs, and insipid conservative commentary on the news stations. Then I discovered I really rather enjoyed the one alternative I had left- NPR. I started listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered over my commute, both of which are pleasant and informative shows, and both of which are provided commercial-free.
So, I save my $10 every month and, every third month or so, I use the money to treat myself to a new audiobook or a couple of CDs when I want an alternative to NPR. I really have to say, if you're going to get XM just to have an alternative to standard radio, see if there aren't some local or public stations you like first. Here in Tampa, we have something like two NPR stations and a local, commercial-free station that runs some excellent world news, commentary, and music you'd never find even on XM.
BTW, the alien origins theory is quite plausible, but the problem is that you would need some little piece of evidence for it. Otherwise, it belongs in the realm of speculation, which is exactly where it has long been.
It has some plausibility, yes, but when you're talking about claiming that life here didn't evolve because it's of alien origin, then how did those aliens come into existence?
Well, you're clueless, too.
Belief (yes, since to a true scientist it is impossible to prove that God does not exist) that a creator does not exist...
Atheism is not the belief that a creator deity does not exist. Atheism requires only the lack of belief in a godhead of any kind. Additionally, it is entirely possible to prove that God does not exist. You cannot prove it empirically, but a LOGICAL proof may exist. See, you can't empirically prove that square circles don't exist, but you can logically prove that something cannot be a circle and a square simultaneously, and therefore a square circle cannot exist. Likewise, it may be possible to construct a similar argument regarding God. More than a couple noted philosophers have tried, and at least a couple have had good success in doing so. Sartre comes to mind.
Humanity is served no disservice by people who wish to live their lives within the context of a universe created by a higher power.
I disagree. The hegemony of the Catholic Church held back science, jurisprudence, and art for centuries. Then there are the countless lives lost in the name of religion. Then there's theocracy. And...and...and... I'm not saying that religion is the only source of injustice in human history, but it's a strong one.
I think if you read my post, you will find that I am not discarding evolution, I'm simply question the notion that natural selection is both necessary and sufficient to explain observed data. See other responses on this thread.
That's not what I got from your original post, and it's to your original post that this person was replying.
My suggestion is as follows; Look beyond natural selection, maybe there is something there.
Uhm...that happened decades ago. Natrual selection is only one part of evolution theory.
Neither view has been proved or disproved. This means there can be other explanations of origin.
Indeed, there can even be other explanations posited after a view has been "proved." New explanations are always welcome, but will be tested rigorously. That's how science works.
But labeling someone who doesn't believe in evolution (or it's associated concepts) a fool or saying they are unscientific is just as bad as labeling someone who doesn't believe in creationism a heretic and a blasphemer.
This isn't about "believing." That seems to be something you're hung up on. This is about constantly working on an explanatory and predictive model for empirical observation, then constructing experiments that test the implications of that model, and seeing if they fit. If they don't, the model needs work. This is not religion. This is the scienfic process.
The creationist have chosen their religion, and you have chosen yours apparently.
On the contrary, I belong to no religion. I just stay as up-to-date on scientific research as my free time allows and make a best attempt to apply scienfic reasoning when drawing my own conclusions in life. Now, I'm listening to your arguments, but thus far you haven't given anything to run with. There's no critique of the current ideas, which any reasonable scientist would be happy to hear out. All you've said is that you are mad that you are called "unscientific" for throwing out the fruits of scientific process on wholly unscientific grounds.
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Mine apologies. When you said "garden variety", I read far too much into it.
I'm not saying this proves that anything is right or wrong, just that the characterization of a particular class of beliefs as fundamentally and universally irrational is quite an indictment, and an unjustified one.
Currently, the human race doesn't have a formula to apply explaining why anyone adopts the ideologies that he or she does. This is a topic which I myself am actually quite fascinated in, and my girlfriend, who has made her entire career studying the use of mythology in nationalist politics, has put considerable effort into helping to crack this nut, but it's a very big nut. Currently, it seems what we know is everything is a "mode of thought" or an "ideology", and they all start with some "leap of faith" or irrational step. This makes it very difficult to speak in universialities about any mode of thought in general, and is, I think a critical issue with the postmodern perspective.
That's one whopper of an unsupported assumption. Bias, cultural assumption, dogma, unconscious beliefs all hold a huge role in science.
Sure do. Still, the experiments speak for themselves. Scientic models describe expected results. The models were built thanks to experiments. Future experiments, if followed correctly, should yield the same results, which elucidate the model. This circularity is held together by an irrational belief in the predictive power of induction. Barring induction failing us, I don't see how you couldn't have a book of the models and a book of the experiments that are used in deriving the models and not get similar results...and even predict them. I do admit ignorance here. If you can show me where I'm going wrong, I'd be in your debt. (No, that's not arrogance. That's genuine, respectful inquiry.)
It is demonstrably true that self-consistent but mutually exclusive systems of rigorously defined science and mathematics can be formulated. Ever read Goedel?
All of the Goedel I have read was based on formal, typographic, systems, and it does allow for the generation of different formal systems describing different, but self-consistent, processes we'd call "math." I have not seen any of Goedel's writings make this argument for science, though I have seen many use Goedel's name and abuse Goedel's proofs to do so. Again, if I've only seen the poor arguments, and you've got the good ones, I'd be happy to eat crow.
I can't get you interpret my saying that I practice the same spirit of examination and inquiry in the area of my metaphysical and spiritual beliefs as meaning I think my beliefs are "arbitrary." What I mean is quite the opposite.
Well, after you take out the options of some sort of universal rationality, you're left with "personal reasons", mostly, and those are arbitrary from a third-party perspective. Personally, I'm quite fond of such an interpretation. Arbitrariness is a central part of my metaphysics. Besides that, I had misinterpreted your statement as "I analyze my beliefs and realize that they're just beliefs and they're just mine."
And why do you assume my beliefs do not appeal to me? If they did not I would not hold them.
A lot of people don't. I got a misimpression you were someone who held certain beliefs not because you liked them but because you thought they were great truths.
And more to the point - I never said a word about what it is, in particular, I believe. Maybe you should ask yourself why you're so eager to put me in a box.
I did put you in a certain, misshapen, box...that's what people do when they try to understand others, to an extent. Really, to me, it doesn't matter all that much what your beliefs are. It could be God or Allah or mystical unity with the oneness of being or faith in chaos or toaster worship. I've done all of those for a while myself. ;)
All I can do it restate my intentions. And my intentions were to not project a dichotomy; however, you're now projecting a new one- religion/rationality. The two are not dichotomous to me in the sense that they are not opposed (to do so would be making objectivist claims, IMHO), but do have interesting interplay. The most important one is this- consider a person who is ignorant of religion and all matters transcendant or divine. Can you rationally convince this person of these matters enough to agreey these matters exist and require a specific stance? I don't know. I don't think so.
My postmodernist sensibilities tell me that there's an irrational step involved in the adoption of any ideology of any kind, and so all ideologies are irrational in their roots. That said, however, I think that an application of pragmatics can give you a ranking of HOW irrational each is. Not all ideologies are created equally to me.
Religious systems with coherent epistemological analysis
That's not quite what I was asking for. None of the religions cited have the self-correcting quality of science. They are, in many ways, coherent, but they also have models that, if challenged or overturned, violate the ideology. For example, Zen cannot stand without a belief in the oneness of being. I give a lot of credit to Ken Wilber's attempts at making Zen a "science of the transcendant", but he still squarely sets the central oneness of being at the top of his "great holarchy", and does so with incredibly ad hoc reasoning and appeals to spiritual yearnings in his audience. (That said, he's the only guy writing metaphysics I'll even read anymore).
I think it's also fair to note that Pythagoreanism is unlike science in that science incorporates new data as it is found. The pythagoreans, rather than coping with new numerical concepts as they arised, declared many of them heretical and even killed members for professing their existence. I have a reference, if you need it. I don't have a reference for this, but I believe the Kabalists engaged in similar behavior.
And this is, really, a big point. A facet of science is the accepting of new data. If verifyability, repeatability, and analysis confirm things that overthrow pretty much everything we thought we knew scientifically, that's fine. By comparison, many religions, even the "scientific" ones, have dealt with new ideas in a very different way. Science has even provisionally suspended the "law of universiality", since relativity and quantum mechanics have yet to be united by unified theory. In the end, such a law may socially be ignored...IIRC, it was really a Newtonian idea, anyway.
I fear you have missed my point: that the scientific method differs from other systems of belief only in extent, not in kind. As the scientific method is based on irrationalities, if we accept science as being valid then we have to accept that knowledge can have an irrational basis.
Dude, I was on board with you on this when we started. Again, my postmodern sensibilities steer me in this direction. Nontheless, there are other ways for deciding ideologies that appear preferable. Pragmatics is my current favorite method. Just because scientific thought is irrational does not mean that it's equally irrational to other modes of thought and inquiry. And that's just talking about modes of thought and inquiry. Many (some would argue all; I'm not some) religions are systems of ritual and cannot be used for any kind of real inquiry.
I'm sorry, but that's not my premise. I never stated that, nor did I intentionally imply it. It's also possible that we think of different things when we think of religion, but I refuse to play a semantic hornet's nest. Which religions do you think are build on rigorous analysis, out of curiosity?
I'm not certain where this comes from. To my knowledge there is no scientific discovery that has debunked any major world religion. If you are referring to the Christian fundamentalist movement which believes in a 5,000 year old earth, be aware that they are a very small minority of Christians. (Albeit very numerous in North America.)
Technically, you can't just empirically debunk a religion, since most of the foundations of a religion are based on matters that are generally accepted as beyond the reach of empirical methods. I also never said there was a religion that science completely debunked. Maybe a cargo cult or something like that...
Except the very principles of science dictate that this cannot be the case. Scientific inquiry is built on the twin axioms of the law of universal conformity and the law of non-contradiction. Science offers no reason to believe that either of these can be the case, nor can it. The difference between accepting only these axioms and accepting the axioms of some of the more coherent religious movements is only one of extent.
This is true, but this is where I switch into pragmatic concerns and go with what has been working best for me. You no like-ah dee science? That's-ah fine with me. Just don't expect me to find much to talk about with you.
Regardless, the flexible changing of the model, dropping old ideas in favor of more correct and new ones, is in keeping with universal conformity and non-contradiction. The model was wrong given the information at hand, so something in the model was fixed. The two "laws" of which you speak are not regulations against this.
These all look like lines from debunkers from times far long ago, and many debunkers back then didn't seem to understand the reasoning processes implicit with skeptical thought back then. That's why so many of them also claimed they'd found "the real deal" with certain spirit media.
Of course, if nobody had ever seen rocks fall from the sky before, and someone showed me a rock with no indication that it had fallen from the sky, I myself would suggest that, if rocks do fall from the sky, there's still no reason to think it...even though, on the whole, the matter is not closed. Having tentative conclusions is important to me, even though I'm willing to discard them and admit that a matter is still open to debate and discussion, and that more information is needed to put the matter to bed. Among scientists, the fallacy manifests most harmfully when the conventional theory for a phenomenon is no better supported than the alternatives. Careers are blighted. Recent examples from biology that suffered "debunking" for decades include:
Some of the topics listed are still controversial, and debunking (literally, the removal of bunk) is an important part of keeping the waste material out of the controversy...it just has to be done correctly or an entire idea space can suffer from a metaphorical case of auto-immune disorder. Some of the topics you listed, however, have shown how the power of experiment and validation quiets contrary ideas.
No, they're not. Some of them are empirical positivists. Some of them go so far as to deny the very concept of knowledge. Personally, I'm an existentialist with some transpersonalist leanings.
IIRC, the word "skeptic" originally meant "thoughtful" or "reflective". A skeptic, to me, is someone who simply demands proof of claims, even of their own, and is willing to analyze their own epistemology enough to understand the potential failures and fallacies in it. Anyone who calls himself a skeptic and fronts materialism as a great truth without admitting to being a materialist or explaining the failures of his own ideology is probably better called a cynic than a skeptic, IMHO.
Read some Shermer, get to know some genuine, honest skeptics, find out what skepticism as a way of thinking means, and then come back and see if you have the same gall for your commentary that I do.
And the problem is that is just patently not true. The list of people far more intelligent than me and (I'll intuit from your ill-considered response) you, BoomerBuddy, who also believe in some aspect of spirituality, goes on and on. Great writers, politicians, mathematicians, logicians, and scientists can be found among the ranks of believers of various creeds.
This is a fallacy known as "appeal to authority." Just because someone smart, famous, or important believes or says something does not make it true or even worthwhile in considering. As an example, I'm rather fond of a philosopher named Ken Wilber. Wilber's a bright and eloquent person, but he also got duped by a cult leader who talked a good line. Smart people make mistakes and fallacies as rapidly as someone else. Part of the hope of a skeptical mentality is to be thoughtful of propositions, including one's own, and to make sure that they're not part of some wanting to believe in things that just don't empirically add up.
But I'm sick of people that treat science like the end-all be-all of human reason with a dogmatism that would do the least reflective religious zealot they despise proud and seem incapable of grasping that there are wider philosophical issues (like consciousness, free will and morality) that science has little or no grasp on - and which metaphysical and spiritual disciplines provide sophisticated and elegant treatments of.
To be frank, I believe that spiritual and "metaphsyical" (in the new-age sense, not the branch of philosophy) provide nothing but a jumble of suppositions designed to make people feel that they know what they're really talking about. I'm not a fan of reductionist materialism, but I believe the spirit of scientific inquiry is important here. One of the things I see as important in scientific rigor is the way in which one can start with a complete ignorance of current scientific models and, through repetition of experiments and analysis of the data, arrive at current models. I agree that study of metaphysics (as philosophers term it) is an important thing, but a similar rigor must be kept in place. To put it bluntly, the implications of every metaphysical conclusion should be tested, analyzed, criticized, counter-criticized, etc, so that we can build a strong, ongoing shared language of subjective experience to complement the strong, ongoing, shared language of the objective (science).
It is rigorous analysis and philosophy, not religion or spirituality, that is the real tool for generating understanding here. Religion and spirituality are, by comparison, random speculation and arm-waving. I think this is an interesting age in which to engage in philosophy, too. Postmodernist perspectives are opening a lot of new doors for avenues of thought and reflection, and relatively few people are taking them up.
Spare me, pal - I don't need your sympathy for my beliefs, which I maintain and practice with my eyes wide open, and with my intellect, doubt, skepticism, spirit of inquiry and open mind intact.
If you admit to how arbitrary your beliefs are, then why not just accept their arbitrary and personal nature and pick some that really, really appeal to you? Emerging religions and quasi religions like Wicca and Chaos Magick are clearly a result of this growing metaphysical skepticism and postmodernism in culture...this is your chance to have the transcendant be whatever you please.
It's an attitude you would do well to work on, because if the history of science is any indication, a whole bunch of the stuff you believe in is wrong.
That's the whole point of science- things indicated by experiment are right until they're indicated by further experiment and analysis to not be. Science is self-correcting in this way, and every idea is really a tentative one, waiting for a better idea to unseat it. Strongly believing in the veracity of that which is indicated makes sense, though. Just because what you agree with today can be overturned tomorrow doesn't mean that belief isn't useful today. You just have to be willing to toss it aside with something better comes along. Most scientists do that.
They've done that for years just by letting such people exist. Seriously- if anyone else told you to give them money because it gratifies an invisible, all-powerful being, would you consider that a reasonable request? It's a scam from one end to the other. The use of a small radio to enhance the scam is only a matter of how complex the scam is.
See my experience with XM for my reasons why XM isn't it.
Helloooo! A simple Slashdot opinion post is clearly not even intended to be on the same level as arguments with a bigger scope of time. You might also want to try being explicit about why C or Java is better than C++.
I wasn't trying to say why C or Java is better than C++. I don't stoop to such vacant navel contemplation. I was making a statement of my own personal preference and giving a couple of general and personal reasons why.
Stroustrup actually has a faq on his home page which refutes most of the common criticisms applied to C++. You should be able to find this via google.
It would seem that Stroustrup's FAQ doesn't really refute many criticsms at all.
The relevant works are listed in the C++ faq lite.
Yep. For a fee.
To draw attention to your Swiss Army Knife metaphor...
I carry a Swiss Army knife with me everywhere (I saw too many episodes of MacGuyver, I think). It's a pretty good tool for most things, and it can do an awful lot, but it isn't as strong or useful as task-specific objects. The little scissors don't compare well to "real" scissors for serious paper-cutting; the saw works, but a chainsaw is better; the can opener functions but makes my hand shurt. None of the knife's tools are optimal -- but it's easier to carry one small red knife than it is for me to laod down with optimized gadgets.
First off, on a humorous note, I should mention that I used to carry a Swiss Army Knife with me, too, until I saw a friend of mine cut himself rather badly with one because his SAK didn't have a locking blade. I know some of them do have blade locks, but I've heard from other people that the locks don't really work and the knife blades slip anyway. Now, I carry with me a Spyderco, and while it doesn't have 20 tools with it, it also has a guarantee that the lock will not release unless the release button is pushed. I think there's something symbolic here...
On a more serious note, though, when I gave up my SAK, I went through a process of asking myself how many times I used each tool on it and whether or not each tool used could be replaced easily. What I found out was that a knife, a keychain can opener, and a keychain bottle opener were all I really needed, anyway. I haven't missed the scissors, the leather punches, the saw, etc. Again, I think there's something symbolic there, too, that's applicable to this discussion.
And now, to get a little more serious...again I'm not against the toolbox metaphor, but there's a difference between a true toolbox metaphor and the C++ take on having a kit of programming tools at your disposal. It boils down to this- if I use a socket wrench to tighten a nut, I can use anything that can grip the nut (crescent wrench, channel-locks, etc) to get it back off. That's because the use of the tool changes nothing. But C++ "tools" are facets of the language, and using one means changing the project and moving it along a specific paradigm. Once a path is taken...say...someone bolts non-OO code in with my OO code...it's hard to go back and do it the other way. This is the equivalent of making a nut that, once tightened with a socket wrench, cannot be messed with until someone changes the bolt. Your project isn't some stable thing you use "tools" on...your "tool" selection alters your project until you go back and rewrite your work. Rather than seeing the different language constructs as "tools", which I feel they are not, we should look at them as "parts" used in building. The question in picking which one shouldn't be "Is this the right tool for my immediate problem?" Instead, it should be "Is this going to contribute to a sensible enhancement, or will this cause the project to look like Frankenstein's monster?"
As a result, I only apply the "tools" metaphor when there is a really good cause for indifference with respect to design. Perl is a language that I feel is built well around this metaphor, and since I hardly ever write anything I care about in Perl, I'm happy to apply it there...but I'm not going to do it with anything large, complex, or where there's personal investment.
This is entirely a personal matter and I might even get labelled "flamebait" for this, but I really have to say...I've spent plenty of time working with C, C++, and Java. The end result is that I'd rather write in C or Java. C has the honesty of being strongly procedural, and if you wish to use some OO ideas where it makes sense, you can build up some limited OO constructs. Java is strongly OO, and if I don't like some of the limitations that come with Java (such as the floating point performance hit), I can link in C code with JNI. I'm fine with that. Each of these two approaches lets you build the tools you need when you need them.
But C++? I can't stand the C++ way of doing things. What a mess. Stroustroup is right that it makes sense to use the best tool for the task at hand, but Stroustroup et al have taken that metaphor to a fault in all of the waywards "features" of C++. Unlike building OO ideas in C or linking procedural code with a strong OO language (like one can do with JNI), C++ throws a giant jumble of so-called "tools" at the programmer and lets him choose whichever attitude s/he wants.
Why do I get annoyed at this? Simple. In the two cases I like, you're free to use whatever tools you like, but those tools must ultimately be expressed in terms of the overall principles of the language at hand. No C coder looking at an "object" in C can ignore the fact that it's just a collection of pointers. No Java coder can ignore the fact the native method is still in the context of a Java object. At the same time, though, these people can also go along with these ideas easily because everything has been expressed in the simple, pre-existing ideas of the language. A pseudo-OO method call in C is just working with a function pointer...a native method in Java is still a Java method.
The problem is...C++, to me, lacks this overall paradigm, other than maybe "anything goes...no kidding". The language constructs in C++ just provide programmers with tools that defeat the idea of working within a paradigm at all. The result that I keep seeing is an endless parade of poorly bolted-on code from program maintainers before me. Friend functions parade through endlessly, turning the code into a pile of well-convoluted spaghetti.
And I think what it boils down to is that many of C++'s features were designed by highly competent computer scientists who thought that they'd like to have certain pet features they liked a whole lot, so they just implemented them in C++. Afterthought upon afterthought has taken the "toolbox" model and left things the way they are. And I still hear cries from people for more new features in the language.
The toolbox model is great, but the argument behind the toolbox metaphor needs some more thought. Unlike the box of tools in your garage, the choice of which "tool" you use in C++ (or any other language) actually changes the project you're working on. You cannot freely throw different solutions at something interchanagbly as a result, and if you do, your project can find itself going the way of the Tower of Babel.
This isn't to say that I don't think C++ can be used for good things...what I am saying, though, is that, by making multiple paradigms available in the same project, it's easy to become buried under idiosyncracies that result from people picking whatever paradigm they want when they want it...and that a common paradigm that many programmers select is "whatever I want, whenever I want it."
Personally, I would love to have a language as strongly and strictly OO as Java that could deliver native-code performance. I have not, as yet, seen one that really wowed me, though.
Slap on an effective means of remote code download and execution without concern for the remote system's OS or architecture, and I'd be the first convert in line, too.
I think that you forgot one feature of Java that, to me, is probably it's most powerful and most overlooked feature: dynamic class loading. The dynamic loading power of Java is, in my experience, worlds beyond that offered by C and C++ because of the fact that you can load a class for execution through so many very different means and can, as a programmer, remain unconcerned about things like the OS of the system from which you receive the class. Classes can be very easily procured from remote systems and boostrapped into the code right away with a level of transparency that I just haven't seen from C and C++.
Yes, C and C++ have dynamic loading capabilities. I've used them, and I'm aware of them. What I'm saying is that I don't find them as flexible or simple as the Java loading mechanisms and, most importantly, it's very difficult for multiple machines with widely different OSes to use the same remote piece of executable code with that level of transparency. Yes, I know that CORBA helps get around this, but I can't say I find CORBA very elegant.
To me, the promise of Java is evident in its uses in making relatively lightweight and secure networking infrastructure. The power of easy remote class loading is what gives projects like Jini the means they need to make physical network location nearly irrelevant in distributed computing.
I think you need to try a new perspective on the "the world is about violence" concept. You don't need marauding gangs around to understand this. I live in a very civil world, and I'm very thankful for that.
But, what you need to do is take a closer look at the civil world. Civillity is basically a set of rules and forms people mutually apply as a proxy for violence. Politics...commerce...even tort law...all of these things are wrappers for violence. What they do is to either stunt violence off by making rewards greater than risks (commerce becomes the alternative to armed theift under this case) or by symbolically putting a form of superior violent force on one side of the issue (elections and government in general are examples of this). Even tort law exists as an alternative to duelling.
To take another perspective, in the end, violence is the great equalizer. You bring violence to the table, and it trumps civil behavior. The most common resolution to the initiation of violence is to bring sufficient violent force to the opposing side that it trumps the situation. This happens anywhere and everywhere someone is arrested for a crime. Civil discourse and rationality rarely play into it.
And this is how violence sits at the core of the human experience. Then again, I train in very lethal forms of armed and unarmed combat (though I have not yet purchased a firearm for myself, I plan to in the future), so maybe my personal perspective is skewed.
Mr. Shatner, what prompted your brief stint with the WWF back in the early 1990's? Did you know Jerry Lawler personally or something?
I'm being serious. I remember seeing Shatner on a couple episodes of WWF Monday Night RAW when I was a teenager, and I always wondered how and why that came to be.
Granted, if I'm up late at night and want some amusment, Coast to Coast AM is on, and Art Bell and his gang are really funny to listen to. I think, of all of them, it's Streiber whose mind is the furthest gone.
Sometimes I'll remember to catch Neal Boortz on 930 AM in Sarasota. He's a Libertarian pundit, and while I also think he's a jerk, I enjoy hearing the Libertarian take on things.
NPR did do a series on the history of the Israel conflict for a week and a half a few weeks ago, but I wouldn't call their coverage of Israel excessive. Additionally, it is a major issue in international politics. Now, granted, I hear only one hour of ME and one hour of ATC, but I don't recall more than maybe one or two Israel stories in the last two weeks. On top of that, I can recall ATC very recently giving an NRA rep excellent time to express his opinions about a rifling signature database, and he definitely outshined his opponent. That's just in my recent memory. But I really don't give much of a care about the bias of NPR anyway. It's mostly background noise while I drive and think. Neither the "liberal" nor "conservative" agendas fit with my views, anyway.
Interestingly, I would think an equatorial orbit would have been fine for me, as I live in central Florida.
Also, last time I checked, government funding for NPR isn't all that high.
Actually, I don't give the $10 to XM, since I returned my XM radio. I was just saving the $10, but I really should give it to NPR, since I do consume their programming daily. Here in Tampa, we have a radio that buys some PRI shows and also fills in with a lot of Pacifica shows and local programming that doesn't get anywhere near the funding NPR does, and I've given money to them in the past, since I felt I had to triage my donations, but I really should be giving to my NPR station, too.
I bought an XM radio kit with some of my signing bonus last year. Since I was going to commute one hour each way down the interstate, I justified the cost to myself as a nice way to have better programming for my commute. The station guide seemed interesting enough...I could get BBC radio, CNN, CNet, a channel of standup comedy, selections of music that interest me, and so on. The $10 each month seemed very reasonable for commercial-free options that I'd enjoy.
So, I bought the kit and I installed everything as per the manual. I activated my account. I got everything in order. I started listening that night. It was really cool to be able to get a continuous mix of house techno and, with the spin of the dial, CNet news. I loved that, if I wanted a laugh in the morning, I could listen to comedians with talent instead of shock-jocks with carnival barker voices. Everything was all well and good...
And then two weeks went by, and I still couldn't keep a signal over my commute. I also started noting that I couldn't keep a signal in-town all that well. I also made a couple drives through the major metro areas of central Florida and could not keep a signal. This started becoming frustrating. It was about this time, though, that I noticed the programming wasn't all that good. The comedy channels just played the same handful of routines by trite comedians over and over again. The 80's station wasn't really covering what I wanted to hear, either. Slowly, the stations I was enjoying just became boring.
After letting XM take two weeks to try and resolve their issues, I called again, only to be told by the support rep that there were not any such problems and that everything was my fault. I explained my configuration to her and she agreed I hadn't done anything wrong. I told her that XM had been given a month of opportunity to communicate with me and hadn't done so, and so I needed to cancel my account. She then asked me to hold the phone for a minute. When she came back, she reported that there was indeed a problem in my area and, if I could just sit tight a little bit longer, it'd be fixed.
By this point, I'd given XM a month, and I needed to return the radio soon or I wouldn't be able to get a refund from Best Buy. I cancelled my account and took the radio out of my car. I was a little disappointed that I lost my alternative to crappy commercial radio, filled with advertisements, music I hated, shock DJs, and insipid conservative commentary on the news stations. Then I discovered I really rather enjoyed the one alternative I had left- NPR. I started listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered over my commute, both of which are pleasant and informative shows, and both of which are provided commercial-free.
So, I save my $10 every month and, every third month or so, I use the money to treat myself to a new audiobook or a couple of CDs when I want an alternative to NPR. I really have to say, if you're going to get XM just to have an alternative to standard radio, see if there aren't some local or public stations you like first. Here in Tampa, we have something like two NPR stations and a local, commercial-free station that runs some excellent world news, commentary, and music you'd never find even on XM.
It has some plausibility, yes, but when you're talking about claiming that life here didn't evolve because it's of alien origin, then how did those aliens come into existence?
Atheism is not the belief that a creator deity does not exist. Atheism requires only the lack of belief in a godhead of any kind. Additionally, it is entirely possible to prove that God does not exist. You cannot prove it empirically, but a LOGICAL proof may exist. See, you can't empirically prove that square circles don't exist, but you can logically prove that something cannot be a circle and a square simultaneously, and therefore a square circle cannot exist. Likewise, it may be possible to construct a similar argument regarding God. More than a couple noted philosophers have tried, and at least a couple have had good success in doing so. Sartre comes to mind.
Humanity is served no disservice by people who wish to live their lives within the context of a universe created by a higher power.
I disagree. The hegemony of the Catholic Church held back science, jurisprudence, and art for centuries. Then there are the countless lives lost in the name of religion. Then there's theocracy. And...and...and... I'm not saying that religion is the only source of injustice in human history, but it's a strong one.
That's not what I got from your original post, and it's to your original post that this person was replying.
My suggestion is as follows; Look beyond natural selection, maybe there is something there. Uhm...that happened decades ago. Natrual selection is only one part of evolution theory.
Indeed, there can even be other explanations posited after a view has been "proved." New explanations are always welcome, but will be tested rigorously. That's how science works.
But labeling someone who doesn't believe in evolution (or it's associated concepts) a fool or saying they are unscientific is just as bad as labeling someone who doesn't believe in creationism a heretic and a blasphemer.
This isn't about "believing." That seems to be something you're hung up on. This is about constantly working on an explanatory and predictive model for empirical observation, then constructing experiments that test the implications of that model, and seeing if they fit. If they don't, the model needs work. This is not religion. This is the scienfic process.
The creationist have chosen their religion, and you have chosen yours apparently.
On the contrary, I belong to no religion. I just stay as up-to-date on scientific research as my free time allows and make a best attempt to apply scienfic reasoning when drawing my own conclusions in life. Now, I'm listening to your arguments, but thus far you haven't given anything to run with. There's no critique of the current ideas, which any reasonable scientist would be happy to hear out. All you've said is that you are mad that you are called "unscientific" for throwing out the fruits of scientific process on wholly unscientific grounds.
How else would you come across?